Fedora 10 preview
Last week the Ubuntu team released Intrepid Ibex, the latest version of its Linux operating system. This week Fedora began its final run up to a new release with Fedora 10 Preview Release.
Fedora is the community-based Linux operating system backed by Linux heavyweight Red Hat and as such much of what happens in Fedora is later incorporated into Red Hat, making each new Fedora release an important indicator of Red Hat’s future.
One of the major claims of Fedora 10 is a faster boot times. To do this the Fedora team is using a new tool called Plymouth. Part of that idea is that the initial login screen for Fedora will be started much earlier than normal which means there will be very little delay between initially starting up a Fedora-based machine and actually being able to log in. It doesn’t actually provide an "instant-on" startup but is designed to make the various startup transitions as quick as possible.
Faster boot times are regularly cited by Linux distributions as being key as more and more users adopt portable PCs as their primary work environment. One of the things about portable devices, however, is that they need to be powered on an off as quickly as possible, which is why Linux developers are now spending so much time on boot times.
The other things that Fedora 10 is touting is improved network connection control. As with boot times, portable PCs are again the driving force here. Users with mobile netbooks and small notebooks want to be able to switch quickly between Internet access points as they move from one place to another.
As far as included software goes, Fedora 10 Preview Release includes much the same as most other popular distributions, including Linux kernel 2.6.27.4, KDE 4.1.2, Gnome 2.24.1 and Xorg-1.5.2.
The one things that is new to Fedora is the the inclusion of RPM 4.6, the latest version of the software management system that the likes of Fedora and Mandriva use. RPM 4.6 is the first major change in the RPM system for several years and promises significantly improved package management because of it.
Other improvement in the fedora 10 include an updated PulseAudio sound server, better Apple Macintosh hardware support, improved HDTV as well as remote virtualisation.
Codenamed "Cambridge", Fedora 10 is scheduled for final release on November 25.
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